The
brightest kind of a day it is always dim down there. A man can see
to the end of nothing; whichever way he looks the wood shuts up,
one bough folding with another like the fingers of your hand; and
whenever he listens he hears always something new - men talking,
children laughing, the strokes of an axe a far way ahead of him,
and sometimes a sort of a quick, stealthy scurry near at hand that
makes him jump and look to his weapons. It's all very well for him
to tell himself that he's alone, bar trees and birds; he can't make
out to believe it; whichever way he turns the whole place seems to
be alive and looking on. Don't think it was Uma's yarns that put
me out; I don't value native talk a fourpenny-piece; it's a thing
that's natural in the bush, and that's the end of it.

As I got near the top of the hill, for the ground of the wood goes
up in this place steep as a ladder, the wind began to sound
straight on, and the leaves to toss and switch open and let in the
sun. This suited me better; it was the same noise all the time,
and nothing to startle. Well, I had got to a place where there was
an underwood of what they wild cocoanut - mighty pretty with its
scarlet fruit - when there came a sound of singing in the wind that
I thought I had never heard the like of. It was all very fine to
tell myself it was the branches; I knew better. It was all very
fine to tell myself it was a bird; I knew never a bird that sang
like that. It rose and swelled, and died away and swelled again;
and now I thought it was like someone weeping, only prettier; and
now I thought it was like harps; and there was one thing I made
sure of, it was a sight too sweet to be wholesome in a place like
that. You may laugh if you like; but I declare I called to mind
the six young ladies that came, with their scarlet necklaces, out
of the cave at Fanga-anaana, and wondered if they sang like that.
We laugh at the natives and their superstitions; but see how many
traders take them up, splendidly educated white men, that have been
book-keepers (some of them) and clerks in the old country. It's my
belief a superstition grows up in a place like the different kind
of weeds; and as I stood there and listened to that wailing I
twittered in my shoes.

You may call me a coward to be frightened; I thought myself brave
enough to go on ahead. But I went mighty carefully, with my gun
cocked, spying all about me like a hunter, fully expecting to see a
handsome young woman sitting somewhere in the bush, and fully
determined (if I did) to try her with a charge of duck-shot. And
sure enough, I had not gone far when I met with a queer thing. The
wind came on the top of the wood in a strong puff, the leaves in
front of me burst open, and I saw for a second something hanging in
a tree. It was gone in a wink, the puff blowing by and the leaves
closing. I tell you the truth: I had made up my mind to see an
AITU; and if the thing had looked like a pig or a woman, it
wouldn't have given me the same turn. The trouble was that it
seemed kind of square, and the idea of a square thing that was
alive and sang knocked me sick and silly. I must have stood quite
a while; and I made pretty certain it was right out of the same
tree that the singing came. Then I began to come to myself a bit.

"Well," says I, "if this is really so, if this is a place where
there are square things that sing, I'm gone up anyway. Let's have
my fun for my money."

But I thought I might as well take the off chance of a prayer being
any good; so I plumped on my knees and prayed out loud; and all the
time I was praying the strange sounds came out of the tree, and
went up and down, and changed, for all the world like music, only
you could see it wasn't human - there was nothing there that you
could whistle.

As soon as I had made an end in proper style, I laid down my gun,
stuck my knife between my teeth, walked right up to that tree, and
began to climb. I tell you my heart was like ice. But presently,
as I went up, I caught another glimpse of the thing, and that
relieved me, for I thought it seemed like a box; and when I had got
right up to it I near fell out of the tree with laughing.